Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Tempus Labs has recently achieved ‘Unicorn’ status when it received an additional $80 million in funding. With this extra money in its coffers, the tech company based in Chicago will be able to expand its operations in collecting and using data to enhance its efficiency and customize cancer care even more. The additional funding came from its current and a new group of investors.

Since it was founded in 2015, the tech company has already received a total of $210 million investments. An individual who was privy to the deal disclosed that with this recent money inflow, the company’s total worth has now reached about $1.1 billion. If a company’s value is over $1 billion, it is automatically raised to unicorn status, a term used to classify a few startups in Chicago.

Tempus was co-founded by Eric Lefkofsky, an entrepreneur who also owns and operates other companies which include Mediaocean, Uptake Technologies, Lightbank, Innerworkings and Echo Global Logistics. This tech company currently employs around 400 workers but this number is increasing since it is adding about 30 employees each month to augment its ballooning operations. With the additional funding it recently received, this pace is expected to pick up even more.

Tempus is on the leading edge of cancer treatments. It is leveraging clinical data from cancer patients to discover better methods of treating this dreaded disease. This will benefit cancer patients since they will be offered more treatment options. The tech company collects molecular data from cancer patients who are currently undergoing treatments. One form of data collection is the digitization of the handwritten patient notes of doctors so that these notes can be stored and be searchable. This will expand the treatment options for cancer patients.

Eric Lefkofsky said that he co-founded the company because he was frustrated with the present system of healthcare that does not put to effective use real evidence and powerful data. He is projecting the possibility that with the scale and breadth of the current available clinical data, healthcare providers are now in a much better position to introduce a new era of precision medicine that can effectively give relief to patients fighting cancer.

According to Eric Lefkofsky, his tech company has established connections with organizations and individuals in every component of the healthcare system. These include drug companies and doctors who are searching for better ways of utilizing massive clinical data to provide more effective treatments to cancer patients.

Eric thinks that the track record of his tech company with regards to its relationship with the healthcare industry stakeholders is somewhat amazing. He believes that they are now at the center of major paradigm shift in the treatment of cancer. Considering that his company is pioneering a new method of personalizing cancer treatments, Eric’s prognostication is not way off the mark.

The recent $80 million additional funding that the tech company received came from several investors. These included Kinship Trust Co., a new investor and existing investors Revolution Growth and New Enterprise Associates. The advisor of the fund is T. Rowe Price Associates.